


Master Plan

by redjaded (timeheist)



Series: The Redjay [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 17:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeheist/pseuds/redjaded
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every good rivalry starts somewhere. This one started with a revolution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place during Roda's 2nd regeneration, shortly (ish) after her exile. The story of how Roda met the Master.

Bandraginus Five, the Redjay decided, could have been a beautiful planet once. It reminded her of Sherwood, if she closed her eyes and imagined. If she didn’t look at what had become of the town now, then she could see rows of houses, interspersed with the occasional tavern or shop. She walked forward through the deserted streets, opening her eyes in case of danger, touching stone and felled tree trunks on her way with a pained look in her eyes. This was Bandraginus Five, yes; she’d checked the coordinates on her TARDIS three times, because when she had people to help, it didn’t do to land in the wrong place. Actual disaster aid wasn’t her usual gig; she usually provided relief, humanitarian aid.

But it wasn’t Bandraginus Five. It wasn’t the planet she’d seen photos of, or read maps about, nor did it have the almost steam punk feel of planets in this side of the Seven Systems. It might have, once, but now it was desolate. Roda had landed between buildings, disguised as a cart laden with hay – and still had straw in her hair, she was sure, but vanity had never been one of her traits – and expected at least a child to point and moan in awe. Nothing. She’d parked completely unnoticed. And that was what worried her.

Of course, what worried her more was that the SOS her TARDIS had picked up spoke of a brutal ten year dictatorship, and yet Roda had been able to find nothing about it in the planet’s past, history, or future. In fact, past the date the mayday had been sent on, she’d barely been able to find anything at all. A scattering of remaining people, a mass, forced migration somewhere in the future, and then the planet would be abandoned. But there was nothing in the atmosphere or – after scratching up the dirt from the main road – earth that she could smell or feel or taste that would ever destroy the planet.

The people of Bandraginus Five weren’t particularly advanced, although the distress call had spoken of untold horrors of technology. They didn’t believe in faeries but they knew that aliens existed, and in many ways they led the same sort of simple life that her friends back in Nottingham did. The familiarity should have made Roda less tense, but it was tarnished. It was worse than what she’d expected to find, because the threat was hidden, and hidden well. Shivering with anger Roda had taken a small red pouch from around her waist, found a tavern with a half-empty barrel of something in it, paid more than was necessary, and made herself comfortable at an empty table with her legs folded up underneath her.

Luckily, Bandraginus Five wasn’t particularly big. When the TARDIS had scanned the planet, Roda had seen infrared signals concentrated on what appeared to be a partially hollow valley, ten miles or so out of the largest town. She had a castle to get through if she wanted to reach the valley, and she stored that away as the most likely threat; who but a tyrant would live in a castle on a desolate planet? A few people tried to approach her, clearly wondering what a stranger was doing in town, but a gentle psychic push was enough to turn them away and give Roda the time to think up a plan. It wouldn’t be easy but maybe she could use the same suggestion to avoid being spotted. If the quetzild in Nottingham, or the Time Agency in the Boeshane Peninsula had taught her nothing else, they had taught her not to rush in without a plan. And how to stay hidden. There was no one to help her, no one left that she could trust. The Time Lords – Rassilon – had made sure of that.

Finishing her heady beer and wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, Roda checked that the string of her arrow was pulled tight before pulling the Lincoln green hood of Will’s borrowed cloak up so that it covered most of her feathers, and nearly her eyes. Her blonde hair – so much longer than her last regeneration – was as always braided back, slung over her shoulder and reaching the small of her back. She was taller too, and that always confused her, even after a hundred or so years. Blue eyes and pale skin finished the ensemble, with loose brown trousers that ballooned over the rim of her leather boots and a dark shirt with long tails and elbow-length sleeves. It was the best Roda could have put together trying to mimic pictures she’d found of the planets but she’d found it surprisingly comfortable. Maybe she’d dress like a Bandraginan more often.

Returning to her TARDIS briefly, planning her route, Roda was careful to stick to what remained of the forest – she could have wept, to see all the trees destroyed, their bluish feathers trampled into dirt and dust and nothing – and out of sight. It took her a few hours to reach the castle. Large and fortified, and again not at all unlike one from Nottingham – had Nottingham gone in for red bricks – it dwarfed the rest of the planet. There might as well have been a sign hung over the door reading ‘here I am, the powerful villain’. Roda shivered, rubbing her temples to dispel a sudden headache and snuck around the castle as swiftly as she could. She could come back; she’d probably have to.

Reaching the valley – which turned out to be a quarry – took the rest of the day, and what she found there made the Time Lady’s hearts sink. Roda covered her mouth with one hand, holding the other around her wrist to steady herself. Movellan, at least thirty of them, dressed in dirty white uniforms with long silver twists of hair going down their backs, regardless of gender. They were a calm android race, but easily corrupted, which had to have been what happened here. Roda’s gaze dragged from their outwardly attractive faces to the power packs tied to one side of their tight belts. They had been upgraded beyond Movellan abilities, and were more securely locked than Roda had ever seen them. Somebody was controlling them, or at the very least using them, and that somebody didn’t want ‘their’ Movellans reprogrammed. Although it was the people of Bandraginus Five that she had come to save, Roda felt herself wanting to liberate the Movellan in turn; even androids had feelings, surely. Though they seemed content enough, what the Bandraginans were doing threatened to rip all of Roda’s compassion for them away.

Until she looked closer. There were at least a couple hundred dishevelled near humans, residents of Bandraginus Five, in the quarry with the Movellans, vastly greater in numbers than the androids but nowhere near as strong. Roda narrowed her eyes, confused, pulling her hood down to her shoulders for a closer look. Some of her paint rubbed off on her hands and smudged, but she barely noticed, rethinking her prognosis immediately. These people can’t have been the ones enslaving the Movellan. In fact the planet shouldn’t even have made contact with them, and certainly not with their people in such a state. Few of Bandraginans – miners? – weren’t injured; some were working with obviously broken bones while others had fresh blood on their hands and faces, tools seemingly held so tightly in their grasp that they couldn’t have let go if they tried.

Bandraginus Five was a mining planet, yes, but not a successful one. Surely with a taskforce this large and such a wide area to mine the planet could make itself a small fortune, but something was wrong. This so-called dictatorship, Roda was willing to bet, presumably the force behind what could only be called slavery. Roda glanced back at the castle again, just on the horizon and looming as ever, then hastily tucked herself in between large metal crates to hide from a pair of passing androids, holding her breath and digging her fingertips into her palms. How had she wandered so close? She barely even remembered her feet moving. And her headache was coming back… She stayed there, despite the cramped size, ten minutes longer, taking note of cameras around the quarry and the passing of guards or androids, and trying to get a glimpse of what was being mined for. The crates were all locked, with no markings, and the miners too far away. She should have done her research better.

Finally, curiosity got the better of her. Roda reached for the nearest crate and shot her sonic device – a glass cutter in her tool belt – at the lock, just as a mercilessly strong hand clamped down on her shoulder.

“Name and rank!”

“I-!” Roda almost dropped the glass cutter, turning to face the Movellan with a bite of her lip. She dreaded to think what she looked like. A local, more or less, but with clothes intact and barely a mark on her, but she had a potential weapon in one hand a bow and quiver hanging over her shoulders making a rather obvious hump in her cloak. The Movellan obviously thought so too, pulling it roughly over her head – despite Roda’s startled protest – and snatching them away with enough force to tear the leather strap from the quiver. Thank goodness he’d not snapped the bowstring! Roda cursed and scrambled for an idea of what a rank would be, and what name to give. Last time somebody had asked for a name and rank, she’d been exiled. The thought drove out fear to be replaced with a scowl.

“Ah, Roda, Sir.”

She glanced back at the taskforce of Bandraginans, wondering how to get out of this mess and how to help, until an idea hatched. A genius one, and Roda had to force down a grin. Get into the castle, find this dictator, and lay down threats. Roda was beginning to realise what this dictatorship was all about. It had to be something valuable they were mining, and their dictator had to be strong, and greedy, likely telepathic. Not to mention good with science, to enslave the Movellan so well. Roda would have said Time Lord under any other circumstance, but she didn’t want to think about the possibility or see her kin. 

She would bring up the Shadow Proclamation and the laws broken – though there was no love lost between herself and them – and if necessary, name drop the Time Lords. Cause a scene in the inner mechanisms and tell the people to prepare for a revolution. To fight back for their planet, their lives. This was no way to live. Whoever had managed to send a blind message to the stars for help knew that! As far as Roda was concerned exiled or not she was still a Time Lord, and she was honour bound to right this wrong both for the justice of the people and the sanctity of time. For once, her basest urges from the Vortex and her Academy education agreed on something.

The unnoticed glass cutter was slipped up her sleeve as she feigned an itch in her arm. She dropped her shoulders, trying to look meek.

“Worker.”

“That name is not familiar...”

“I’m... A new worker.” Roda cringed, “Just started, Sir, no harm mean-“

“Continue!” Roda opened her mouth to argue but then remembered to let herself be lead. Her teeth clenched tightly, but she let her shoulders sag, and let herself be frog-marched towards a steep-walled pit by a pair of obedient androids who, she supposed, were just doing their job. She didn’t know if Movellans felt pain but they were as enslaved as the Bandraginans, maybe more so. Though of course if they insisted on throwing away her bow – a gift from Will, and one of her most prized possessions! – Roda was going to find playing the victim very difficult…

“I don’t have any tools.” She struggled – couldn’t help herself – but while one Movellan was left to hold her still another disappeared, returning with some sort of pick and a leather bag. Aware that her lock-pick set hadn’t yet been taken from her, Roda took them with raised eyebrows and pretended to have never seen anything of the sort before in her life.

“Worker 2469, these are your tools. Should you lose them, or attempt to fashion a weapon, you will be brought before the Master.” The… Who now? “Should you rebel, you will be brought before the Master.” Now there was an idea… “Should you attempt to steal the stock again, you will be brought before the Master. This is your final warning.”

Roda snorted, but before she could say another word she was pushed bodily into the pit, dropping the near two metres to land on her knees and tear holes in her trousers and graze her palms. She grumbled under her breath but the Movellan had already gone, one pointing up at the castle then back at the pit with uncharacteristic severity. Roda cursed, again; now that she’d drawn such attention to herself, now what? At least the Movellans hadn’t noticed the feathers in her hair, or the paint on her face. If she was going to keep up this charade then they were both going to have to go whether she liked it or not. They hadn’t seemed to notice she wasn’t a Bandraginan after all, nor that she was naturally telepathic. The modified control box must have been doing its job far too well. Roda’s temper flared again. Pushing herself to her feet, she glanced nervously at the few workers who dared stop what they were doing to stare at her, then did her best to join in the work, hacking at the dirt wall as though it was this so-called ‘Master’.

The shadow of the castle doused the whole quarry in darkness as the clouds passed overhead and Roda growled in its direction, jaw clenched with anger for the people of the planet. Damned right she was going to rebel, and fashion a weapon. Steal the stock too, if she could help. Let them try to take her to the Master – whoever he was. That was exactly where she wanted to be.


	2. Chapter 2

Being possessed of a Time Lord’s stamina apparently had its benefits. Rodageitmososa was sure, with the work that she had been doing for the past fortnight she would have been dead by now if she was a Bandraginan. It was just as well she wasn’t, or the planet would have been screwed; no one else seemed to have picked up the SOS that she had. She could only marvel that the Bandraginans, who did not have the genetic advantages – manipulations, the work of the first Time Lords – that she did, could do almost as much work as she was doing without falling down dead. It was no wonder there was no strength left for them to escape.

Since ‘infiltrating’ the taskforce at the quarry Roda had answered some of her questions, but not as many as she would have liked. Most importantly she’d found out that ‘the Master’ was in charge of the mine, what she was mining for – if not a name for it – and why some despot was driving a planet to the brink of extinction. In doing so she’d nearly broken her ankle falling down a mine shaft, but she had also gained a reputation amongst the miners for being able to work long into the night-time hours when everybody else took a break or tried to sleep. It wasn’t that Roda wanted to help this ‘Master’ that everyone spoke about, or particularly enjoyed digging and clawing at limestone and mud in a pit.

She felt… Guilty. It was the Shobogans all over again, a lesser species – no offence meant – having their lives ruined by one that had evolved and meddled. She wanted to help the people, and she didn’t quite have a plan, and so if all that she could do to help them for the time being was ease their workload then so be it. She could dig – would dig. And the routine became tit for tat. More than once, she’d fallen asleep in the quarry rather than the slave quarters near the dig and had been woken up by a kindly Bandraginan before she got reprimanded for sleeping on the job. The Movellans didn’t distinguish between hours worked, only hours that should be worked. Roda had been whipped the first time she stayed asleep; she made sure it wouldn’t happen again.

But her arms and legs were bruised not only from working, but from taking punishments for other people. Many more and any grand storming of the castle was going to get tricky. As in Sherwood Forest, Roda had developed what could loosely be called ‘friends’, quickly enough. She used her real name, shortened of course, for simplicity’s sake. The Bandraginans knew that she wasn’t from their planet but assumed but she had been roped into the workforce like they had, and they didn’t have the strength to argue. The Movellans were none the wiser, but they had to punish someone, and if Roda could protect someone young – a child, maybe, or someone elderly – then whatever their crime was, it was hers now. She could take most of what the Movellans had to offer without batting an eyelash. She’d gone without eating or drinking before, and she had a fairly high tolerance for pain after the Oubliette, and being shot. Not to mention a sense of justice that outweighed anything else.

No, Roda’s only complaint was that the Bandraginans wouldn’t – or couldn’t – stand up for themselves. She didn’t need – or want, not yet, not so soon after her exile – anyone to stand up for her. After ten years of enslavement and tyranny those who dared to try and fight or escape were never heard from again. Roda understood their logic; she just didn’t agree with it. Of course she’d tried to rally an army. Every night she did return to the camps, Roda flitted from room to room behind the Movellans’ backs, telling stories of travelling and of Robin Hood and of freedom. Escaping chains, figurative or literally. The things that had given her hope in the past and still did now.

The children of the miners, or those old enough to mine themselves, clung to her stories as a lifeline. The adults didn’t have the hearts to stop them, but turned the other way. No one wanted to know about fantasies and fairytales that were out of their reach, or help to form a plan lest their name reach the Master’s ears. Roda would have done it on her own, if she had slightest optimism that she would survive a one woman attack against a man who could enslave an entire planet and what she now knew to be over eighty Movellans. There were a few young men who she was sure would side by her if she did start a fight, but Roda suspected it was the appeal of a new woman in the camp that got their blood pumping and nothing more. A few of the people she spoke to longed for what she had to offer but for better or for worse Roda was their only, if self-imposed, rescuer.

A few weeks in and she couldn’t take it any longer. Roda felt ashamed; so many years of living with Robin Hood and here she was doing absolutely nothing because she was scared to go against the majority. She was an outlaw on Earth and an outlaw on Gallifrey – why should she fear becoming an outlaw on Bandraginus Five? The people would surely take her side if she won, and if she didn’t, dying a martyr would hopefully only lead to a regeneration, and she could back off, try again, seek the help of a greater force from the safety of her TARDIS. Not that the TARDIS had agreed with her first plan at all, and ten miles away their symbiotic link was too weak to feel each other. She only hoped it was alright. She had it to fight for, too. If she wasn’t in the Matrix then no one would ever know to retrieve the TARDIS of a fallen Time Lord, or want to in her case. And so she’d had to start the fight, had to get someone on her side, and just hope that she could wing it. As the Movellans had put it, ‘should you rebel, you will be brought before the Master’.

“Hey, you! 2469! Get back to work!”

The Movellan guards shouted, hurrying over in an agitated glide. Roda ignored them, continuing to scrable and swing her pick at one of the young men – Avery, tall, scrawny, red-headed and entirely Roda’s type – who had finally agreed to help her. He swung his fist at her stomach, far more wary of the consequences of her plan and less willing to hit a girl – he thought – than she was to hit him. He soon got the idea that she wanted to make the fight as realistically as possible when she grabbed a hold of his long red hair and yanked him backwards, ripping a shocked shriek from his throat. Avery wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling his head free with – Roda stifled a wince – a few strands of his hair, tackling her to the ground and landing with his face smartly in the centre of her amble chest. Roda had to stop from laughing as she felt Avery’s silent, rumbling chuckles into her bosom, and shouldered his face away before it got the better of him and rolled on top of him. For all the seriousness of staging this fight, the fight was lightening Avery’s mood, and it really wasn’t time to encourage him.

At least it would give him a story to tell and something for them all to laugh over when they ate tonight, hoping that Roda wasn’t dead – she hoped – and praying that she actually had a plan – which she didn’t, not quite yet. The fight dragged on for a few more vicious minutes, during which Avery managed to steal a kiss and Roda gave him a more than proper bruising punch across the jaw. They broke apart from a tangle of legs and hisses as Avery dropped to his haunches, clutching his shoulder and feigning a hit from Roda’s axe, his friends rushing forward to try and pull him out of the range of the apparent crazed woman, resigned to playing along with the plan. He risked a wink as his friends crowded protectively around him, and Roda snarled and threw herself towards him just as a pair of Movellan guards’ programming kicked in and she was grabbed under the arm with a visible swing.

“Crazy bitch!” Her conspirator spat, wiping blood from his mouth – Roda tried to shoot him an apologetic look, sorry to have actually drawn blood – and pulling one arm away from his friends to keep up the charade. “I’ll fucking kill you for this! You’re insane!”

Roda snarled back, unable to admit that there was a sort of thrill to the staged fight. It was primal and exotic – by Gallifreyan standards – and she could almost taste the surge of adrenaline in her blood. She was enjoying this, perhaps too much. Perhaps the Time Lords had been right to call her a savage. Perhaps she should have done more than rob from the rich more often.

“Keep out of my fucking bed then, you bastard!”

She was being led – she hoped – exactly where she wanted to go, but Roda was beginning to have reservations. What if she was just killed outright? What if this turned out to be the Boenine Peninsula and the Shadow Proclamation all over again and she wound up strapped down to a chair, being interrogated and tortured by a – not unpleasant to look at – near human enemy? She pulled at the arms of the Movellans holding her still, trying to lead her backwards, while another wriggled an arm free of hers to try and stop her from kicking and biting. Avery shot her a worried look and Roda forced herself to put aside her fear and turn it into strategy. She licked blood from her lip as Avery’s friends pretended to try and calm him down and, mercifully, the Movellans left him along. She was the troublemaker, yes, she was the one who started the fight, she was the one who had rebelled, she was the one who always rebelled. That was it, she thought, risking nudging their telepathic controls for just a second, concentrate on me, focus on-

“Whore!”

Avery’s shot caused Roda to lose her concentration, and the Movellans to stumble for just a second. She growled.

“Cur!”

“Succubus!”

“Bas-!”

“Quiet!” Roda was shaken roughly, like a child trying to get a broken toy to work again. Suddenly dizzy she snapped her mouth shut and scowled venomously over her shoulder, aware that her bare heels – she’d given up her shoes days ago – were dragging in the dust. “You will be taken to the Master now!”

It was a miracle Roda resisted the urge to reply with a sarcastic remark, as she shot a triumphant glance in the direction of the castle, watching Avery pull himself to his feet and wipe a hand across his forehead. He nodded once, and Roda winked, before her hands were forced behind her back and a length of rope was wound around her wrists, her elbows, and then her wrists once more. She swallowed, starting to feel more helpless; she’d hoped to find her bow back with this Master, and what use was it without the use of her hands? She’d cross that bridge soon enough. Or at least, in a couple of hours. She hadn’t seen any vehicles on her way to the quar-!

“Hey, put me down!”

The larger of the two Movellans lifted her bodily from the ground, dislodging the few feathers that Roda hadn’t already torn out – the paint also washed from her face – as he hefted her over his sleek, smooth shoulder and his companions ordered the Bandraginans back to work. The crowd dispelled back into the mine with the uncomplaining Movellan workers and Roda tilted her head, trying to watch them until they disappeared over a hillock and left the site behind. An hour passed without issue, until the terrain got rockier and – jarred by a trip over a large rock – Roda sank her teeth into the shoulder of the Movellan carrying her, briefly forgetting that she was biting an android. Though it – he? She wasn’t sure – didn’t seem to feel the pain, she was still pulled off his shoulder and braced against the rock as the Movellan snapped at its companion so quickly that Roda only just caught what they were saying. If she got out of this alive she could have written a paper on the Movellans alone; she’d never thought them capable of bad moods until a few weeks ago. 

“Sedate her.”

The other Movellan hesitated for just a second as Roda spluttered and tried to pull free. The sleeve of her shirt was rolled up to nearly her shoulder, tight against rare muscles formed from archery practice.

“But the Master will not be pleased…”

“Screw the Master!”

Roda managed to get a kick into the Movellan’s shin before the needle pressed into the top of her arm. The headache she’d had on and off since arriving in Bandraginus Five – she’d put it down to the atmosphere and learned to ignore it – intensified, and Roda longed to wrap her hands around her burning throat and just go to sleep and get rid of the pain. She didn’t know what was in the drug but it was fast-working, and as she fell limp against the boulder she began to wonder just how much the Master knew about the slaves in his quarry, herself included. She slipped into unconsciousness with Gallifreyan curses to curl her father’s toes on her lips, and as the Movellans moved on, her simple loped around her dreams like an animal in a trap.


	3. Chapter 3

“You, my dear, are not who you say you are.”

Roda groaned. She wasn’t aware she’d said she was anybody at all. She tried to stand, wondering what the miners were on about, and whether she had fallen asleep on the job once more, only to find her head spinning like a top and the lights and sounds around her contorted into a heavy, painful pulse. The pressure pushed down on her skull like a hundred hammers, threatening her back into sleep once more, and as she grasped out at the nearest structure, what looked through bleary eyes like a table of some sort, knees colliding with something made of a fine cloth, her memories snapped back into the place. She let go as though whatever the structure was, it was on fire, surprised to find her hands free to catch herself and squinting through the glare in the direction of the still-talking voice. Rassilon’s balls, she hadn’t felt telepathy this strong since her trial…

“In fact.” The low invasive voice continued, purring like a tiger. It was hard to tell if the speaker was actually that pleased with himself or her ears were just playing tricks with her. She managed to open her eyes properly, the cloth structure becoming a leg, and then a knee, and then a gloved hand taking a firm hold of her shoulder and manoeuvring her into a sitting position. Her head rested back against the man’s leg automatically and Roda groaned slightly, being the right way up doing little for the wooziness at any particularly helpful rate. “You’re not even Bandraginan.” She blinked a few more times, rolling her neck to look up at the figure above her, the noise and light beginning to fade to a more normal, heightened Gallifreyan level until she could remember she had a plan for getting where she – hopefully – was and a job to do. Her gaze focused more quickly on a dark-haired, smirking face, with an immaculately trimmed beard set atop an intricately patterned collar. The man tipped his head to one side, studying her, holding her upright as the leg withdrew and he crouched down to nearly her level. “I would go so far as to say you were a Time Lord.”

“…Lady.”

Roda groaned again. Her suspicions back in the forest had been right. Her inevitable capture must have been planned for, the drug manufactured purposefully. Few sedatives that would affect a Bandraginan would have any effect on a Time Lord, and he must have known that she would only fake unconsciousness. But… Only a Time Lord would know that. Everything had suddenly become stage upon stage more complicated. Roda raised a shaking hand to her mouth, coughing with faint regenerative energy as her body became to dispel the poison, and slid her finger and thumb to pinch the bridge of her nose as the golden glow evaporated. If she’d thought the headaches had been bad before – at least now they made sense – then this was even worse. A different kind of headache, though, no longer a telepathic attack and more like a hangover (or a blow to the skull).

There were even more things to worry about, too. If this man – he had to be the so-called Master – knew that she was a Time Lord then perhaps he had done some research. Perhaps he knew that there was a price on her head on a hundred different planets, and that he could make a fortune on any of them. Perhaps he knew that Gallifrey would ignore any distress signal or diplomatic appeal that she managed to somehow make, and her name-dropping would be simply idle threats. Her plan began to crumble, and she leaned her face against her palm, trying to assess the situation while lifting her jaw with trapped pride. This Time Lord seemed younger than she was, even if he appeared older, was more telepathically potent than she was, and wore rich clothes that put her in mind of the noblemen who passed through Sherwood Forest and paid for their trespassing with every ounce of gold in their pockets. It felt strange to have the tables turned.

“And you are too.”

“How clever of you.”

Sticking out her tongue childishly, Roda focused on her telepathy first, as she shrugged the Time Lord’s hand from her shoulder, throwing up mental haphazard barriers that – for the time being – he seemed content to humour her with. Her sight and hearing finally settled with one more breath of yellow dust Roda took a deep breath and pushed herself to her feet, taking a few wary steps back. She reached for her bow out of instinct before remembering that it wasn’t swinging from her hip, and had been confiscated weeks ago. Her captor smirked with a dark look, clearly displeased that she had undermined his authority and gotten to his feet. He’d probably gotten used to the Bandraginans cowering at his feet. Well, no longer. Roda held his gaze as the man began circling towards her, pointing over his shoulder with a quiet laugh.

“Looking for those?”

Roda almost howled to see her bow and emptied quiver propped up in a corner of the room, the wood of the bow partially splintered from abuse. He might as well have broken her arm; the bow was almost as important as her TARDIS. A sudden thought crept in, worry that the arrogant bastard had found her TARDIS, too, but surely he would have shown that off first. The old girl had to be safe. But her bow…!. Will Scarlet had made it for her, Robin Hood had taught her to use it, and Rassilon had never been able to take it away from her, even if he had taken so much more. And now it was in the hands of an enemy. She narrowed her eyes, and curled her hands into fists, taking a threatening step forward until each Time Lord could hear the beats of the other’s hearts.

“I am.”

“And yet they would appear to be in my possession.” The man tapped his bottom lip with one of his gloved thumbs, stroking his bearded jaw intently. Under different circumstances, Roda thought, briefly, she might have thought him attractive, or charming. In fact, he was both, but he was the enemy as well. It had been a long time since she’d last seen another Time Lord and in fact she’d jumped the planet’s timeline by a few hundred years when she’d been dumped in the vortex first, just to spite her Gallifreyan judges. A pretty reckless move she’d decided not long after but at least it had made her harder to follow and easier to forget, since they clearly wanted that so much. “Tell me, Time Lady, why should I give it back to you? You’re a liability in my plans. A spanner in the works.” The dark man laughed and pressed forward, shepherding Roda until her back brushed up against the stone wall of the castle and her head started to spin again. She swallowed the nausea down, refusing to lose so easily. “After all, I’m holding all the cards…” He pressed closer, reaching one hand out for the back of her neck. “Redjay.”

Roda choked, jerking her neck free and pressing her hands against the man’s chest to shove him away.

“Who-who are you?”

The Time Lord tsked, and laughed. His grip on the back of her neck tightened until Roda pushed him bodily and his eyes narrowed. He grasped his own chin once more. “And here I thought you would have done her research before trying to fight me.” He pouted. “Shame. I,” Roda could feel his breath against her jaw as he stepped forward once more, whispering against her ear. “Am the Master.” 

“Never heard of you.” Another fault of her own pride. She should have been keeping up with Gallifreyan politics. “Stupid name.”

“And Redjay isn’t?”

Roda leered, and wrinkled her nose. “And you smell Trakenite.” She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have some poor girl back there, do you?”

“Oh but I’ve heard of you.” Roda’s eyes widened. This latest regeneration had little in the way of a poker face. She always had to cheat at card games. “And it’s a long story. I’ll tell you if you’re good. Are you jealous?” The Master laughed, grabbing hold of Roda’s wrists as she swung a punch straight for him. “I know you very well. You see, I’ve been watching you.”

“How?” It was times like this when she really resented being exiled, and the cauterization of her telepathy that came with it. Roda should have been able to tell that the Master was a Time Lord from ten miles away, in the quarry. She hated to be so many steps behind him. She could only dread how much he knew about her. How he’d heard of her, without her mind being in the Matrix. And yet his tone sounded almost impressed, behind the sneering and postulating. Clearly he was more impressed with his own cleverness. “I’ve not seen another Time Lord in over a century and-“

The Master chuckled. “And technically, you don’t exist. You think a little thing like that would stop me? The Redjay exists if not your original self, and you disappearing from every crime scene practically screams Time Lord. Did you know one man described you as Macavity. T.S. Elliot?” Roda shook her head despite herself. “Shame. You’re not easy to find, if it makes you feel better. I’ve simply been keeping an eye out, but then in you come, waltzing into my domain, and I have you right where I want you.” The Master tapped his bottom lip and, at a loss, Roda folded her arms across her chest. “Not your usual modus operandi, I would have thought.”

“And what do you intend to do to me?” Roda’s voice was just as quiet, just as threatening and far more feral. The Master was all calm sophistication, every part a Time Lord. He raised an amused eyebrow, turning his back on Roda and stalking back towards his ‘throne’ across the room, certain that the Movellans circling the room would keep Roda from trying to run. He leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and smiled an acidic grin.

“Do to you? My dear Redjay, I’m offering you a deal.”

It was, Roda decided at last, time to think up a Plan B.


	4. Chapter 4

In hindsight some of the things that Roda had called the Master might have been a mistake. Still, she was having trouble believing that he didn’t deserve any of them. After all, he had enslaved a whole planet for ten years, mercilessly slaughtered anybody who dared to stand up to him, and tried to seduce her into joining him even though he knew who she was, and what she stood for. Her code of honour wouldn’t stand for it any longer; the Master was bad news, maybe even evil. She hated keeping up the falsehood of agreeing to his terms, letting him do what he liked and playing the role of mercenary in exchange for a small cut of the profits to go to ‘whatever little charity you want’. Apparently he’d put a lot of work into this project, mining oolion – his word for the gem in the quarries – for a project he refused to explain. He was willing to bargain with thieves and renegades this far into his plan.

More than working with him, however, she hated the beating down of the week, the people of Bandraginus Five, who probably thought her dead, or themselves abandoned. It had been a lifestyle Gallifrey tried to drill into its children from birth; you are a Time Lord, above all else, and your word is law. But what gave them that right? It was the rich – in coin or spirit or IQ – enslaving the poor. A Time Lord against mere near humans who didn’t stand a chance. It sickened her. She had done all that she could working alongside the Master and so far, he didn’t seem to suspect a thing but enough was enough. She couldn’t bring herself to side with the tyrant a moment longer. That said, she had a fairly healthy survival instinct, which felt very strongly the other way as she hit the ground with the imprint of the Master’s hand hot on her cheek.

“Bastard!”

She’d lasted three days before snapping, but those three days had been more productive than she could have hoped. She’d played the meek little Time Lady unwilling to go up against the Master, now she knew who he was. With an ego the size of a small moon he had even fallen for it, and given her free reign of the ‘castle’, just so long as she stayed out of his room and didn’t leave. Of course it hadn’t taken Roda all that long to realise the building was bigger on the inside and not a castle at all. It was a TARDIS, presumably the Master’s, which spoke volumes about his character. Roda kept hers hidden and small, and the Master, literally, built a castle. And so plan B had taken form. There were places to place calls and send distress signals from TARDISes, and if Roda could find some way to drive the Master from the planet then she could scramble his coordinates buy the planet some time. Not above digital theft and fraud, she could even steal his money if he left her well enough alone.

Which he luckily did. Controlling the Movellans and overseeing the mine took up most of his time, and though he complained that Roda was keeping things from him and wasn’t to be trusted it was easy enough to appeal to his pride and convince him that she was abiding by his rules. She’d broken into the denied bedroom first of course, correctly guessing where he’d hidden his control room, and spent the evening meal casually suggesting she’d found out she was in a TARDIS and could quite easily find a way to use that if she wanted to. The Master had locked the door and locked her in one of the guest rooms for the night, but not before she’d managed to place a few calls and move around a couple of figures. The next day, incapacitating one of his enslaved Movellans, she’d managed to program herself an ally. The day after that she’d lost her temper.

“Get your fucking foot off me!”

As for the Master it was strange, but his own way, he’d actually seemed to find her fascinating (until now). He had refused to explain how he’d turned rogue as well, but it was clear from the way he held himself and the fact that the Castellan had not intervened in his crimes that the Master was a renegade. Not an exile, however; Roda was sure she’d have been able to tell. The only thing he’d revealed to her about his plans, his history or Gallifrey was that not long after her exile, Rassilon had died, and the Master had been born under the rule of a new Lord President. They had built him a crypt in the Death Zone. Roda, surprising herself, had gone to bed in tears and refused to admit that she cared.

For the first time Roda was struck by the idea that someone might find what she did admirable other than the Merry Men and those they helped. Sure, people had said thank you in the past – almost – but this was another Time Lord passing judgement, and not directly cruelly. She’d taken advantage of the approbation as best she could, getting close enough to find out what the Master was making the Bandraginans mine for at all, and the Master had come to the conclusion that if the Redjay was willing to work with him – apparently too blinded by success to see through her bluff – then she was willing to be taken to bed as well. Roda hadn’t put out but she’d come damned close, and not necessarily unpleasantly. There was some thrill in fighting for dominance, even if you were beginning to hate a man with both your hearts.

The last straw had been the Master shooting a Bandraginan – Fitz – through the head for daring to try and steal enough Oolion to bribe the Movellans and escape with his family. Foolish but noble. Roda knew the man; he was young, hard-working, and loving towards his wife and three children. Now, if – when, when – she managed to liberate the planet, those children would grow up without a father, and possibly because Roda had put the idea of freedom into that man’s mind. Possibly because the Master had been testing her, destroying the body of an innocent and desperate man right there when he knew what she stood for. And the look of betrayal in Fitz’s eyes as he’d crumpled to the ground, death by Tissue Compression Eliminator, recognizing the stranger who had hoped to save them all?

The Master had been sporting a bloody lip before Roda even had the chance to call him a murderer, or he had the chance to defend himself. Roda’s latest regeneration was stronger all around than she had been before, and she had always been a brawler, but when he’d gotten his bearings and started deflecting her blows the Master had overpowered her easily, throwing her from him so that her back hit his throne like putty. Roda winced. Cracked ribs became broken ribs as soon as the Master backhanded her wordlessly and sent her down to the ground, his foot crushing down on her spine. Well she’d had worse. Probably.

“I knew converting the Redjay was going to be difficult, my dear, but I granted you the intelligence not to make it impossible!”

Roda hissed in a breath as the Master pointed the Tissue Compression Eliminator into her spine, moving his foot, and twisting it cruelly. She’d never seen it in action before, and really hoped not to have to do so up close and personal. Ignoring the horrific sound of her grazing ribcage she forced her shoulders to lift, her hips pressed against the ground so that she could roll out from underneath the Master. She moved just in time, ducking the fire just barely and making a dash for her cracked bow, still taunting her from across the rom. Maybe there would be one arrow left to use to stab if she could only-! A strong hand got her by her braid and she hissed in pain, twisting as tears rushed to her eyes. As her first caught the Master’s jaw he let go and Roda stumbled backwards, throwing one arm defensively around her stomach and backing towards the door.

“Fuck you. You – you murderer!”

“Language, Redjay...!”

The Master growled. Roda smirked, starting to enjoy the fight as equally as she was scared. The Master stalked forward, cutting off Roda’s path to the door and shooing away the Movellans but Roda was a step ahead of him, a hook torn from the wall clutched tightly in one white-knuckled hand. Not an arrow but it would do. As the Master tried to pin her to the wall Roda lurched forward, digging the unforgiving metal into the first flesh she could reach. The Master howled angrily, feral-sounding as he tried to pull the metal from his thigh but Roda twisted the metal, hoping to incapacitate her would be killer. Maybe if she injured him, she could get him to leave the planet, or manage to run. No such luck. The Master grabbed her wrist, twisting just as sharply and Roda dropped her makeshift dagger to pull her friction-burnt wrist away with a reproachful growl. The Master hissed in a sharp breath and pulled the hook from his thigh, tossing the bloody metal across the room with little regard. When he attacked again, he was less merciful.

Roda choked; the Master could move with a limp but Roda’s ribs had moved more, and he was on her again within seconds. His gloved fist was drawn back and the leather connected first with Roda’s throat. Her breath escaped with a gurgle as she sunk to the ground, grabbing at his front and trying to pull him down with her. She thrust her knee up, catching the Master in the groin and he smacked her again, colouring her eye. The hand sprung back like a boomerang to catch Roda across her other cheek and she ducked just in time to keep a fist from meeting her eye. She wasn’t fast enough to dodge the other hand as it brutally grabbed her jaw, fingers digging into pulsing freckles like a vice to drag her back and in the Master’s face, him hissing like a snake.

“You’ll pay for this.” Roda managed to laugh. The Master narrowed his eyes further, finally lashing out at her mind. The headaches Roda had kept at bay for three days threatened to return and, putting her strength into keeping him out of her plans, Roda’s feeble attacks started to mis. “If you’d submitted to me I would have kept my promise. Let you live.”

“I came here to save these people,” Roda coughed, biting down on the Master’s wrist as he slid it down from her bruised jaw to snatch at her throat. He shouted in pain, and Roda’s last few words were muffled by his arm. “And I’ll die for them if I have to.”

The Master tore his hand back, and wiped the blood from his wrist, his suit torn by Roda’s teeth. He hissed in anger and jabbed the TCE into the hollow of her throat, dragging upwards until the skin was torn by the sharp edges. A drop of blood hit his thumb, and he smirked, doubling Roda over with his leg behind her back until her ribcage screamed in agony. Roda might have shouted herself, but the lights in front of her eyes put her in mind of the Medusa Cascade, and she almost forgot why and where she was. She tried to swallow, closing her eyes, reminding herself that her messages had gotten through. Her plan had to have worked. It just needed to reach its peak, with or without her…

“That can be arranged.” The Master eyes went dark, his true nature revealed. Roda blinked, determined not to pass out, knees buckling as the Master let her go and watched with triumphant as she landed on her hands in knees at his feet. He straightened up, massaging his wounded leg, his blood and her blood smeared across Roda’s clothes and throat. “Let’s see what the people of Bandraginus Five think of their martyr when they watch her die at the Master’s hand.”


	5. Chapter 5

All the miners had fallen silent. Roda had never heard them so quiet before.

The execution was compulsory. Even the Master was good enough to give them a break from mining for his precious, rich Oolion for an hour or two. They would have come anyway. The Redjay had tried – and failed – to fight for their freedom, in their eyes. It was only the might of the reprogrammed Movellan guards and the threat of the Master’s weaponry that kept a riot from breaking out, especially amongst the men, to rescue her. Roda prayed that they wouldn’t; resistance was futile, and all that, and it would only get them all killed as well as her. But at least she’d driven them to passion. Maybe that would lead to something when help arrived. Help had to arrive.

She couldn’t let herself be led onto a podium with a hood over her bruised and bloodied face, a rope noose already hanging like a cobra around her neck for nothing. She hadn’t planned on becoming a martyr. Or maybe she had. Roda didn’t know anymore. Maybe this moment was what the Untempered Schism had been trying to show her all those years ago. So be it. Roda could play the role as well as she had played any other in the past. The end would surely justify the means, even if she was still fighting to justify them herself. She still wanted to fight, to escape. She just wasn’t sure what best course of action was anymore.

Roda, however, would have been a lot less terrified if she didn’t believe that the Master had the will to draw out the execution until he had robbed her of each and every one of her remaining regenerations. She’d wounded his ego, and she didn’t think he was the kind to take a blow like that kindly no matter how few people – only androids, really – had paid witness. At least she’d not gone down without a fight; all of this plan to take him down, and physical wounds of his own to boot. Apart from the limp in his right leg where Roda had stabbed the hook through skin and muscle, he wore a crudely put together tourniquet around the arm she’d bitten, his gloves abandoned.

Some of the Bandraginans poked each other and muttered that it was true, the Master wasn’t impervious to injury after all, but a vicious glare from the Time Lord himself or the crack of an android’s whip silenced the gossiping audience. And besides, they were all really here to see the execution of their martyr, whether they were happy about it or not. Nobody would dare to argue, or fight back. The Master was clearly certain of it. Executing an idol was far too potent a thing. And he would draw out the traitor’s suffering beautifully... Roda hoped he had reason to doubt after all.

“My people! People,” The Master paused for dramatic effect, giving something of a royal wave to the crowds. His only response was a terrified murmur; the Master struck a formidable figure even limping across the gallows. He took in a deep breath, “Of Bandraginus Five. I present to you your lady, your martyr, your supposed saviour. I present to you the Redjay!”

He stepped calmly across the wood, pressing the steel of his Tissue Compression Eliminator into Roda’s spine, shooing away her Movellan guards to force her up the stairs to her own execution himself. At least the bastard was getting his hands dirty. Roda stumbled, unable to see where to put her feet, and as she hit the ground, wood cracking against her legs to the sound of the crowd’s pity, the Master caught the back of the condemned hood and pulled her back to her feet. Roda gasped with surprise and swore venomously, but the Master only pushed her forward, holding onto her bound arms and pulling a laser cutter from his pockets.

The Bandraginans grasped in horror as the TCE was taken away and pocketed delicately, the laser cutter pressed against the Redjay’s throat. She recognized that touch. And here she’d been wondering what had happened to her lock-picking kit. Roda was careful not to make any sudden movements. The darkness and suffocating feel of the black sack made it hard for her to focus, as did the lingering scent of her own blood. And still she shivered, and the Master chuckling with triumph as he stroked his thumb across her throat and kept the still-sheathed moving in lines across her bruised skin. Her chest was slightly exposed, top buttons missing, and the Master’s hand briefly passed over bare, heavily freckled skin. At that Roda fought, growing through the cloth gag (torn from her own shirt sleeve) pulled between her teeth, and she squirmed more violently as the Master tutted and disciplined her with a quick, hot burst of the cutter. 

Mothers covered the eyes of children and most of the men turned away respectfully after brief, only natural glances. Roda growled once more. If she got back to Sherwood Forest, if nothing else Will Scarlet was going to demand blood from whoever had injured her so badly. He’d been just as angry – if not more angry – to see the state of her bow, too, lying unstrung and splintered by the gallows. The thought of Will’s ire made her laugh, short and broken. If she’d ever seen him again… Her first lover. When, Roda forced herself to think, when. She would see him again.

The laser cutter was used to tear the hood and the Master pulled it off Roda’s head with a flourish. Roda had to stop herself shouting out as the laser licked her face, leaving darkened skin behind it and taking hair away with it. She closed her eyes, not wanting to be accidentally blinded, and the Master bathed in the crowd’s horrified captivation. Roda could barely meet her eyes in case she still managed to let them down. The Master grabbed her bruised jaw and squeezed, and Roda was made to face the Bandraginans after all. She tried to force her head proud and high.

“Look at your precious Redjay now. This is what happens to those who dare to disobey me.” 

And Roda was a sight. The bruises inflicted before her public execution were only a start. The Master had focused on her broken ribs first. By now there were four of them, the original broken rib threatening to puncture her lungs if she didn’t put pressure on it soon and the last three digging into her chest lower down. Roda’s breath was deep and heavy, and the ribs pressed strange swellings and bruises up against the skin. There were more than just the few bruises needed to break the bones, inflicted by heavy boots or stabbing fists, and Roda had become a patchwork of blue and red. She’d laughed, then, saying the Master should have seen her painted in woad and with feathers in hair. She would have matched nicely. He’d slapped her then.

One eye was half closed, and the finger bruises that ringed across her jaw were like a subtle neckle. Roda’s arms were burned to bruising from the rope, and she couldn’t have put any weight on her left arm if she tried to. While the Master walked now with a limp from his bleeding thigh, Roda’s stagger was from the sheer effort of not giving him the satisfaction of having broken her. Damned if he was getting that final a victory. And then of course there were bite marks – that his laced collar hid – testament to Roda’s last ditch attempt at freedom, on the way here. Just knowing they were there made her grin through the gag.

The Master tugged her backwards by the noose until he could hook the end of the rope to the wooden contraption that would – if she was lucky – break her neck. Not an end she’d ever wanted. Her pupils dilated, the truth of the execution finally sealed in her mind. She’d seen men hung in Sherwood Forest, and even a mercy killing was an unpleasant way to end that. Roda wasn’t expecting anything of the sort as she ducked and tried to avoid the rope, to what end she wasn’t sure. The Master bared his teeth, always sinister and charming, and turned Roda around to show her most bruised side to his captive audience. She fell still, hissing. The Bandraginans hummed apologetically, some of the men held back anew by Movellan weapons as the Master made sure the noose properly cradled Roda’s throat. Roda saw Avery’s fury, and flinched as he was smacked across the face, sent reeling back and ordered not to try and reach her again.

“Looks like you have an admirer, Redjay.” The Master chuckled, tapping his chin with one hand and pretending he was deep in thought. He preened as he stood, watching Roda staring at her feet and the trap door as she tried to assess the best way to either break her neck quickly, or survive the drop. The cloth gag was torn from the Redjay’s mouth and caught her off guard, left to litter the floor at her feet. “Tell me, do you have any last words before your Master ends your life?”

Roda looked at the Bandraginans and thought of herself, let down by the people she’d put her faith in to protect her back on Gallifrey. She looked at the moon, just creeping up over the horizon behind the trees, and thought of the vortex that had taken her in instead. She refused to look at the Master, her jaw set, as she might have refused to look at Rassilon if she saw him now; out of the corner of her eye, watching her back, but not betraying any of her emotions. Her eyes sparkled, and Roda rolled her shoulders carefully so she could stand straighter, looking straight at the crowd with wide eyes. She knew exactly what to say. She just hoped the Master let her say it all.

“There’s a man I know. A good man; maybe the best. Robin of Locksley!” The Master sneered but hung back, pacing this way and that like a tiger. Roda ignored him. “And Robin, he – he robs from the rich, to feed the poor. He stands up for what’s right and if he saw your people now he would do anything he could to set you free!” The crowds turned to each other, stealing worried glances. Of course they were sorry the Redjay had to die, but would they suffer for her last words? “Maybe I’m not Robin,” continued Roda, chuckling to herself and forcing the words out as through the sandpaper lining of her pained throat, “But I’d like to think I’m something of a protégé. I know Robin; I’ve studied under Robin,” The Master yawned in boredom, but the crowd had taken a step closer, “And I follow Robin’s ideals.” Roda jerked her chin up, as close to raising a fist to the sky as she could get, and practically shouted. “For Gallifrey, for Robin Hood, and for Bandraginus Five! Fight back, fight to avenge me, but most of all, fight for your freedom!” The Master narrowed his eyes and readied himself to silence his foe. “This bastard can’t take that away from either of us!”

The Master grabbed hold of Roda’s forehead and pressed it against his in mocking intimacy, knocking over her telepathic defences like a house of cards. The Bandraginans watched in horror as the Redjay arched her shoulders and screamed in pain, wondering what more could be done to her without leaving any marks. The Master’s hand pressed against her neck and chest, the noose holding her as upright as ned be, before relinquishing his hold on her nerve centre and letting the Time Lady drop forward and gasp for breath. The Master was too distracted to notice how the Bandraginans raised their tools thoughtfully, and how even the odd Movellan stepped from foot to foot as though the Redjay’s ‘last words’ had got to them as well. He stepped back and grabbed for trapdoor lever.

“If you beg now, Redjay, I might let you live!” The Master smirked like a Cheshire Cat. How could his enemy get out of this one? “All you need to do is accept me as the Master.”

“Ah.” Roda caught her breath, struggling back into an upright position. “But I wasn’t finished.” Roda’s grin widened as she shuffled in her bonds, and the Master narrowed his eyes, expression hanging between worried and cynical. Almost bored. This time Roda turned to address him, making sure that her words carried to the Bandraginans all the same. This really was turning into a speech; it was a shame she’d never been any good at giving them back in the Academy. But as she realised what she had to say, giving the Master forewarning of his own downfall, Roda actually found herself laughing lightly, enjoying what could be her final moments.

"You can kill me, sure.” The Master snorted, as though he agreed wholeheartedly. “But I wonder what the Shadow Proclamation will think when they check their voicemail and find out an anonymous well-meaning citizen has forwarded an SOS from this very mine. Sent just before I came here, in fact. Very emotional. The anonymous tip might have added a few details herself. Slavery and murder on a planet lower than level 5 with a developing dominant species, and the subjugation of a quasi-human species which shouldn't even exist in this sector for another four centuries. Now I’m no expert but I think that might get some people into trouble…”

Roda took a deep breath before continuing, her throat still raw but her spirits lifted. The Master’s jaw, she noticed with satisfaction, had set into a line of hatred and promised pain. He hadn’t seen this one coming. The moron; maybe she hadn’t aced the Academy but she was still, and would always be, a Time Lady.

"And I wonder how your profits will look when the universal trade network has been warned that all the oolion mined in this sector in the last decade is stolen property and riddled with fraud. Funny thing about claims like that; you have to take them seriously. It’s anyone’s guess how long it’ll last but the UTN will make sure that no one can or will trade in oolion. Sure,” Roda half-shrugged. The murmuring from the crowd grew louder and louder. “It'll cause some trouble for honest miners too but really, this stuff?” Roda jerked her chin at the mine, where deposits of oolion abandoned by miner summoned to the execution glinted and caught the light. It realy was a pretty mineral... Roda would be the first to admit she was a kleptomaniac and a magpie. “Nobody who can't handle a loss. And the paperwork'll clear on it eventually. Not a problem for you, though. Since you've been so-o good,” She leered. The Master bared his teeth. “At keeping the books, right?

"Oh, and, you can leave after you kill me-“

“Oh, I will.”

The Master’s hand closed around the lever once more, but he had to know what else she had to say, just in case. Roda fancied he still hadn’t admitted that he’d lost, or was going to lose. The Bandraginans had even begun to approach the gallows.

Roda’s eyes narrowed too. “But,” She continued, “I know a TARDIS when I'm sitting inside one and it's all too easy to scramble someone's coordinational data just in case they try to kill you. If you’ve really heard of me you’ll forgive the paranoia. Sorry about that.” The Master pouted. “Crashed a lot of TARDISes when I was younger, and I lived with the man who invented the TARDIS.” At that he actually raised an eyebrow, surprised and almost impressed. It passed in an instant to be replaced with the same fury, and Roda found herself shouting over the bustling crowd of Bandraginans. “I got pretty good at hiding the damage pretty quickly. I die, you leave, and Rassilon-only-knows where you're going to land next. You've really blown your chances that I'd fix that up before I go, now. Bandraginus Five’s a dead end, Master. I won.

"Oh.” Roda looked up as though she’d had a sudden epiphany. “And your laces are undone."

The Master looked down before he could stop himself. The miners erupted into laughter. With nothing else to say – funny. He really did love the sound of his own voice – the Master tightened his grip and jerked his arm back, cutting off the laughter in an instant.

The crowd held their breath. The Master sneered.

The trapdoor opened. The Redjay dropped.


	6. Chapter 6

When Roda went through the trapdoor all hell broke loose on Bandraginus Five.

The first thing that happened was Avery pushing his way past Movellans and Bandraginans alike to grab Roda’s legs as the rope jerked on her neck, catching her a second before her full weight went on the noose. She gasped, trying to cough, or breath, wriggling her hands and blinking past dots of light and pain to work out what was going on. She could hear shouting and crashing, but all she could think was, over and over again, ‘thank Rassilon I’m alive’. Someone was behind her, and she would have cried out in pain as a knife dug into the skin of her wrists if she had any breath to shout out with. It was all she could do to drag in sharp, shot breaths through her ragged throat, trying not to have to switch to respiratory bypass before she worked out what the hell was going on.

Her vision finally started to focus just in time to watch the first of the Bandraginans fall, a heavy blow from a Movellan fist catching them across the back of their head. She could have sobbed to see the whole crowd fighting back, though out of happiness or despair she wasn’t sure. The knife finally found purchase on the ropes on her wrists and Avery’s hands tightened on her thighs as he tried to steady her, and as soon as Roda’s hands were free she clawed at her neck, trying to work the noose knot loose. A second later Avery disappeared from underneath her and, legs kicking underneath her, Roda struggled for breath once more.

Her curse was a hiss of High Gallifreyan, but she was unable to fight the base instinct for survival to try and help the rebelling miners. She saw more of them go down, along with a couple of Movellans, and through blurred vision she could vaguely make out the figure of Avery, clasping his arm where a laser shot had blackened the skin. The air was full of dust and shards of rock and even oolion, blood flecking the ground where people had been hit, some killed, by mining tools and other improvised weapons. The Master was shouting, and though Roda could sense the psychic will in his words she couldn’t make out what the words themselves were anymore.

Just as she thought the Master was going to manage to kill her after all, Roda hit the ground knees first, and found the air to howl in pain as her broken ribs were jarred and she fell to her side. Instinctively she curled up, trying to make herself small and gather her breath. She shouted when someone stamped on her hand, breaking fingers into a kaleidoscope of fractures in their haste to fight for their freedom, and forced herself to use the stalks of the gallows to drag herself to her feet and join the fray. People were dying. This was her fault. The authorities would be here soon, help was coming, but this chaos…

She grabbed a child out of the line of Movellan fire just in time, and threw them under the scaffolding, begging them in a hoarse voice to take shelter too low for fighters to knock them. The other children, all clumped together, did the same, and Roda stooped to fish a glass cutter from the ground to use as a weapon. Her bow would have been better but with a broken hand she wouldn’t have been able to use it even if it was nearby. She curled her weapon into her good hand, pushing her way through the throng and trying frantically to see where the Master was. His leg was injured, he couldn’t possibly get far in this mayhem…

There! She saw him out of the corner of her eye and pushed on, whimpering with pain that she forced herself not to think about. She’d had worse… probably. He was surrounded by Banraginans, shouting threats and orders to mixed effect. Some of the miners were too scared of him, still, to do anything but turn and run, or beg for mercy. Others continue to fight, the mob mentality prevalent, and the Master cut through them with ruthless meticulousness and only minor wounds to his name. Still, surrounded by more than ten people his attention was completely on the fight, and not on controlling the Movellans, who were stumbling back and shaking their heads more than they were actively fighting. Thank Gallifrey for small mercies.

As soon as she was close enough, after what felt like hours of fighting, Roda leapt. Two Bandraginans went down with her but so did the Master, shouting in surprise as the woman with the cut noose around her throat tackled him to the ground. She held the glass cutter to his neck threateningly, too adrenaline fuelled and hurt to form anything more than a suggestive growl. Stop, or I cut. Stop, or I kill. He’d pushed her too far, trying to kill her. Roda’s faith in Time Lords not trying to kill her had waned a long time ago.

The psychic attack caught her, and several surrounding Bandraginans, off guard. Roda dropped the glass cutter as she fired, managing to slice into the Master’s shoulder even as he bombarded her struggling mind with sensory stimulation, making everything too loud, too solid, too bright, too strongly scented. A few of the Bandraginans dropped to the ground clutching their heads, and the remaining Movellans staggered to a stop, the psychic control over them severed. Gritting her teeth Roda ducked her knees into the Master’s side, trying to pin him down while unaffected Bandraginans moved in to overwhelm him, but he continued to attack her mind with all the fury of someone who had just been humiliated in front of hundreds of people.

“It’s – it’s over, Master!”

Still he broke free, scrambling to his good leg and knocking the approaching Bandraginans back as he made a beeline for the gallows. Roda rolled to her feet, staggering after him while the last of the Bandraginans started to herd the Movellans together, their lust for blood at least satiated by the mass terrified surrender of the android race, braids hanging limply at their backs or held out in frantic peace offerings. Those that could tugged frantically at the wires of the boxes around their waists as though disgusted with themselves and the way they had been controlled. No one paid the Master any attention but Roda as the cheering started to break out. No one but Roda noticed the Master’s hand slip into his pocket and pull out a teleportation device until his voice broke out over the cheering, loud and furious.

“I’ll kill you, Redjay!” Heads turned, both Bandraginan and Movellan. Roda stood at the base of the gallows barely supporting herself by the wooden frame, taking comfort only in the fact that the Master was pressing one hand to a hole in his chest that was streaming blood. Damn it, if he got away now…! But she didn’t have the strength to climb the gallows and take him. “One day. I swear,” He hissed, his voice now so low that only she could hear him. Perhaps he was speaking telepathically; she could barely tell anymore. “You’ll regret the day you were ever born!”

The Master staggered backwards and slammed his hand down on the teleportation device. The crowds cheered, unable to comprehend that the Master was gone, couldn’t be brought to justice. Maybe, Roda reasoned, shielding her eyes from the blinding flash of light, that was enough for them. The knowledge that the tyrant was gone, that their home was theirs again. That their martyr had come through for them. Had she known the stories that would be told she might have laughed…

Instead she stumbled, reaching for handholds that were no longer there and crashing to the ground as the pain overtook her and everything went black.


End file.
